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Online Chat: Ideas to Save the Failing Budget Process

Tuesday - 3/4/2014, 2:13pm EST

Former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker (now
chairman of the GTI Coalition) and Connecticut State Representative Diana
Urban join Federal News Radio for an online chat to discuss ideas to fix the
federal budgeting process.

Since 1977, Congress has passed a full budget only four times by the scheduled
deadline at the end of the fiscal year. Instead, continuing resolutions have been
the name of the game. Since 1997 alone, over 90 different CRs have been passed in
order to fund agencies.

Courtesy of Diana Urban and David Walker.

So, what is it about the current budget process that leaves Congress and the President
unable to meet their budget deadlines each year? And what needs to be fixed to
establish an effective budget process?

In our special report, Now or Never: Ideas to Save the Failing
Budget Process, Federal News Radio asks a host of experts, including
Walker and Urban, for their opinions on how the budget process could be changed.
(Read their individual columns by clicking the link above.)

Walker explains what impact a two-year budget cycle could have on appropriations
and oversight, and what benefits a capital budget, alongside an operating budget,
might provide. Rep. Urban, famous in her state for championing results-based
accountability, will discuss the idea that programs be funded based on an agency's
ability to make them transparent, accountable and produce a beneficial result for
citizens.